Friday, December 23, 2011

As Catherine Ashton, High Representative for the Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission stated:

“[T]he European Union opposes the death penalty under all circumstances. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union states that no one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed. In this regard, the decision today contributes to the wider EU efforts to abolish the death penalty worldwide.”

Sodium thiopental, a chemical commonly used in the three-drug cocktail used in American lethal injection, can now only be exported from E.U. countries with prior authorization by national authorities. The decision will likely increase the difficulty faced by states of procuring the already scarce drug for use in their executions. In addition, the Commission announced that the import and export of electric shock sleeves and cuffs, instrumental in the use of the electric chair, are now wholly prohibited from import and export.

A federal judge has blocked several provisions of South Carolina's anti-immigrant law:

District Judge Richard Mark Gergel blocked three parts of the law, known both as SB20 and Act 69.

The first section blocked makes it a felony to transport or conceal a person "with intent to further that person's unlawful entry into the United States" or to help that person avoid apprehension.

A second section makes it unlawful for an adult to "fail to carry" an alien registration card or receipt.

And the final section blocked would have allowed local law enforcement with "reasonable suspicion" to detain any person the officers believe is in the United States illegally.

A U.S. appeals court has ruled that retaliation against whistleblowers is a RICO violation:

The court's opinion gives life to a provision in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) that makes it a felony to retaliate against whistleblowers who provide information about corporate fraud to law enforcement officers.

The EU Aviation Directive, the world's only mandatory program to address emissions from aviation, will take effect in January 2012. Today’s decision is the suit’s final ruling in the Court of Justice, and the case will now return to the UK High Court, where airlines had originally brought the suit challenging UK regulations implementing the law . The UK High Court will implement the recommendations of the Court of Justice ruling.

Bank of America has generously agreed to pay out some money for something or other:

Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic homeowners...were saddled with higher mortgage fees and interest rates during the housing boom than White borrowers, federal officials say.

Now, those borrowers may have a chance to get a part of that money back.

A $335 million settlement with Bank of America announced Wednesday is the largest fair-lending settlement in history.

Now let's never speak of it again.

The Kroger grocery chain claims that it will no longer carry Asia Pulp & Paper products:

"After an independent review, The Kroger Co. and its family of stores have decided to discontinue the sourcing of products from Asia Pulp & Paper," said a statement posted on the retailer's web site. "Kroger has informed APP of our concerns about the impact of their business operations on deforestation."

Behold the post-apocalyptic hellscape that is São Paulo, Brazil, five years after it defied God and Nature by banning advertising signage:

Within months, city authorities had removed tens of thousands of ads both big and small—much to the dismay of business owners, who said the ban would surely ruin them. Five years later, have all the businesses in São Paulo gone under? Hardly. In fact, most citizens and some advertising entities report being quite pleased with the now billboard-less city. A survey this year found that a 70 percent of residents say the Clean City Law has been "beneficial."

When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself--for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat’s blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women’s underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.

Andrew Young, co-founder of One Acre Fund, drives home the importance of this shift toward local ingredients, and of ultimately building agricultural capacity in regions facing food insecurity. For those who don't know it, One Acre Fund is working to create agricultural markets in Africa and in doing so, to develop a more sustainable solution to some of the problems that create the need for food aid in the first place. Here's what he tells the Guardian:

"Famine is preventable," said Young. "Every famine should be a blaring red siren, reminding us that we could prevent the next one. Africa has the capacity to be a food supplier to the rest of the world, if only we would invest in agriculture more."

The Madison, WI School Board has rejected a plan to start a sex-segregated charter school:

The proposal was defeated largely on grounds that the school was to use non-union teachers with little school board oversight. Although those issues predominated at the hearing, the ACLU of Wisconsin made sure that the school board could not ignore the gender equality issues.

Teh Gays have graciously apologized for ruining former Minnesota Senate majority leader Amy Koch's marriage by forcing her into an adulterous relationship:

We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.

Edward Wegman's plagiarism made it into The Scientist's list of 2011's top five science scandals:

A controversial climate change paper was retracted when it was found to contain passages lifted from other sources, including Wikipedia. The paper, published by climate change skeptic Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Computational Statistics and Data Analysis in 2008, showed that climatology is an inbred field where most researchers collaborate with and review each other’s work. But a resourceful blogger uncovered evidence of plagiarism, and the journal retracted the paper, which was cited 8 times, in May.

From the 2006 Wegman report to Congress, up to this year’s “Colour Theory and Design”, so much of Wegman and Said’s recent work demonstrates extreme reliance on unattributed antecedents, as well as numerous errors and incompetent analysis.

2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite revolts. Luddites at 200 is planning appropriate celebrations:

[B]eing a luddite today means being a sceptic about the dogma of technology as progress, not about denying the real benefits of some technologies. It means insisting that the crucial decisions about which technologies are developed are made democratically, not just imposed by corporations and technocratic elites. And it means standing up for our own ideas of what progress really is.

I hereby endorse this event and/or product. Speaking of which, I complained some years ago about the common pejorative use of the term "Luddite" on the left; I included an 1819 quote from William Cobbett that bears repeating here:

Society ought not to exist, if not for the benefit of the whole. It is and must be against the law of nature, if it exists for the benefit of the few and for the misery of the many. I say, then, distinctly, that a society, in which the common labourer...cannot secure a sufficiency of food and raiment, is a society which ought not to exist; a society contrary to the law of nature; a society whose compact is dissolved.

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.

Metal prices being what they are, it may be time to mine the Super-Sargasso.

A public service announcement: Please be aware, this holiday season, that It's a Wonderful Life has some plot holes:

Well I like the movie except the angel is shown as a namby pamby when in reality they are awesome powerful beings. Also in reality the Building and Loan should have turned the corner with its success and been much more profitable. Oh, the plot holes!

I look forward to John Aglialoro's remake, in which Clarence will incinerate that whore Violet Bick with divine laser beams that come shooting out of his eyes.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Roy Edroso recently made an offhand remark to the effect that if you want consistently conservative governance, a robot is your only man.

He's got a point. The problem is, robots come from Old Europe; they come from the pit of Hell. And while they may be a bit more gemütlich than Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann, they require expensive maintenance and they're not as adept with stairs. It's bad enough that Obama bows to foreign dignitaries; the last thing we need is a president whose clockwork runs down in the middle of singing "Les Oiseaux dans la Charmille" to Hu Jintao.

The Commodore PET is a safer choice. It's adorably retro, hearkening us back to that simpler, more innocent time before all of us hated everything. It was made down home in Pennsylvania by square-eyed, steely-jawed men, so you know Peggy Noonan's gonna get on board. You can have a beer with it, or at least near it. It can repeat the numerals "9-9-9" with all the hebephrenic fixity of Herman Cain and twice the conviction. It blows Rick Perry out of the water with a whopping 8K of RAM. You can easily store replacement units at Mount Weather. And its dependency on the extraction industries is no mere metaphor; if you want the President to boot up in time for World War III, drill baby drill!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

I've seen a number of obituaries for Christopher Hitchens today. They seem to alternate between two basic stances:

Yeah, he was an unrepentant warmonger and misogynist...but he sure did stick it to those goddamn Bible-thumpers and their invisible sky buddies!

Yeah, he was a hellbound atheist...but he sure did stick it to those goddamn peacenik hippies and their cult of diversity!

As you can see, things even out nicely. Granted, Hitchens' political miscalculations have a body count. But how about all those dragons he killed? (Or not actual dragons...but, y'know, the whole idea of dragons qua dragons, per se, in nuce, und so weiter. And not actually killed...but, y'know, personally disputed in some adamantine, ontically oppositional sense of not agreeing with 'em nohow, so there.)

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Who knows? Maybe angels don't even exist!

How many Iraqis died in the last nine years? Who knows? Let's look forward, not back!

When Hitchens called down brimstone and fire on Baghdad, that modern City of the Plain, at least it was based on tribalist hatred, gadfly posturing and preening first-world privilege rather than mere superstition. I mean, give the guy some credit. He may have been wrong — politically, historically, logically, scientifically and morally — but at least he wasn't stupid. And if you don't believe me, just look into this barrel full of invisible dead fish.

Anyway. Forgive me if I don't feel like eulogizing Hitchens, who shrugged off countless deaths with one laborious literary phrase after another. I would much prefer to praise good people like myself, who attempted to prevent countless deaths with one laborious literary phrase after another.

On second thought, let's change the subject. If we're talking about dancing angels, should thumbtacks count as pins?

The Obama administration proposed regulations on Thursday to give the nation’s nearly two million home care workers minimum wage and overtime protections. Those workers have long been exempted from coverage.

Labor unions and advocates for low-wage workers have pushed for the changes, contending that the 37-year-old exemption improperly swept these workers, who care for many elderly and disabled Americans, into the same “companion” category as baby sitters. The administration’s move calls for home care aides to be protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law.

Hours after the release of a Justice Department report that said that Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio fueled a culture of anti-Latino bias in his office, the Department of Homeland Security said it was kicking him out of an immigration enforcement program.

Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday the department is ending an agreement with the Maricopa County sheriff's office that allowed trained deputies to enforce immigration laws.

A district court has ruled that the Center for Reproductive Rights can sue Kathleen Sebelius for her antiscientific, tragically stupid and fundamentally immoral decision on over-the-counter sales of Plan B:

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of CRR, stated, "We intend to take every legal step necessary to hold the FDA and this administration accountable for its extraordinary actions to block women from safe, effective emergency contraception. It has been ten years of battling to bring emergency contraception out from behind the pharmacy counter. The FDA cannot simply continue moving the goal posts down the field for women's reproductive healthcare."

A 22-year-old man who shouted slurs at a lesbian couple before breaking the windshield of their car soon found himself in a vulnerable position – pinned to the ground by one of the targets of his vitriol.

The Institute of Medicine has called for an end to most medical experimentation on chimpanzees:

After nine months of deliberation, a panel of independent experts judged that most current experiments involving man's closest primate relative can safely be discontinued.

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, said he accepted the panel's recommendations and promised to name a working group to figure out how to implement them.

As part of its plot to impoverish and enslave us, the EPA has legalized the use of alternative refrigerants:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today issued a rule making greener refrigeration gases legal in household refrigerators and some commercial freezers.

The agency added three hydrocarbons as acceptable alternatives in household and small commercial refrigerators and freezers through EPA's Significant New Alternatives Policy program, SNAP, which evaluates substitute chemicals and technologies for ozone-depleting substances under the Clean Air Act.

Adding insult to injury, it also plans limit our access to the mercury our bodies need:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to approve a tough new rule on Friday to limit emissions of mercury, arsenic and other toxins from the country’s power plants, according to people with knowledge of the new standard. Though mercury is a known neurotoxin profoundly harmful to children and pregnant women, the air toxins rule has been more than 20 years in the making, repeatedly stymied because of objections from coal-burning utilities about the cost of installing pollution control equipment.

Several new R&D projects are underway by providers of ocean technology, each of which either aims to reduce the harmful behavioral impacts on marine creatures, or may limit harmful impacts as a byproduct of their innovations.

This technological innovation means the women’s collectives can keep producing crops during the region’s six-month dry season, provide greater food security to their families, and start thinking about sending their kids to school. It also could help communities survive and adapt to climate change. The project is now expanding: At least eight more villages in Benin will start using the solar irrigation systems.

Renewable Energy News reports that solar is becoming cheaper than diesel generators in India as French-company Solardirect has bid to supply the energy grid with solar power at a rate cheaper than the average for diesel generators:

Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa attain a length of only 8 to 9 mm (0.31 inches), slightly longer than a tic-tac mint. The frogs are about 2 mm smaller than the previous record, which belonged to other members of the same genus.

The Los Angeles City Council has voted unanimously in favor of a constitutional amendment against corporate personhood:

Every struggle to amend the Constitution began as just a group of regular Americans who wanted to end slavery, who thought women should vote, who believed that if you're old enough the be drafted, you should be old enough to vote. ... We're very proud to come together and send a message but more than that, this becomes the official position of the City of Los Angeles, we will officially lobby for this.

Friday, November 18, 2011

A Kansas judge has dismissed all 23 of the felony charges brought by Phill Kline against Planned Parenthood:

“While additional charges in this case remain, we are pleased the most serious charges have rightfully been dismissed. We are grateful Johnson County taxpayers and Planned Parenthood will no longer waste enormous time and money on these politically motivated allegations brought by now discredited prosecutor Phill Kline,” the organization said in a statement released Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday, the Massachusetts state Legislature passed a bill designed to prohibit discrimination against the state's transgender population. The protects against employment, education, and housing discrimination and revises the state's hate crimes law to protect against crimes targeting people based on their gender identity and gender expression. The state House approved the bill late Tuesday and the Senate voted, with little opposition, to pass the legislation on Wednesday.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that law enforcement agencies need a warrant to track cell phone users by location:

In a victory for the privacy rights of everyone with a cell phone, a court has held that law enforcement agents must get a warrant to access cell phone location records. The ACLU, ACLU of Texas and Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a brief urging the court to adopt exactly this position. The Constitution requires nothing less.

The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that Gov. Jan Brewer broke the law by firing redistricting commissioner Colleen Mathis:

In a brief order, the justices brushed aside arguments by Lisa Hauser, the governor’s attorney, that Brewer’s decision was not subject to court review.

More to the point, they said that Brewer’s power to oust a commissioner is limited to situations of substantial neglect of duty or gross misconduct. The justices said that nothing the governor alleged in her letter firing Mathis rises to that level.

Nevada's attorney general has indicted two title officers at Lender Processing Services for mortgage fraud:

The Office of the Nevada Attorney General announced today that the Clark County grand jury has returned a 606 count indictment against two title officers, Gary Trafford and Gerri Sheppard, who directed and supervised a robo-signing scheme which resulted in the filing of tens of thousands of fraudulent documents with the Clark County Recorder’s Office between 2005 and 2008.

A Navy review board has overturned a Marine Corps decision to strip one of its senior science advisors of his security clearances, intervening directly in a case that attracted attention among lawmakers on Capitol Hill and among advocates of enhanced legal protection for military whistleblowers.

Franz Gayl, who complained publicly in 2007 that the Corps had squashed an urgent request from U.S. soldiers in Iraq for heavily armored vehicles, was stripped of his clearances last year and suspended indefinitely with pay.

The Oregon Court of Appeals has extended the state's ban on wolf-killing:

The court reaffirmed an earlier court order prohibiting the killing of two members of the Imnaha pack by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, pending the final outcome of the court’s review of the state’s wildlife laws. Three conservation groups, Cascadia Wildlands, the Center for Biological Diversity and Oregon Wild, had petitioned for review of the wolf-killing rule.

A Californian startup named Simbol Materials believe that it can extract lithium, as well as zinc and manganese, from the brine that is pumped by geothermal power plants. They expect to be able to compete with the lowest-cost Chilean lithium producers, as well as produce the world's purest lithium carbonate.

Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength has been meeting with congressional leaders this week, continuing their push to raise taxes on the very richest Americans. “We want to pay more taxes,” said California millionaire Doug Edwards, a former marketing director for Google. “If you’re fortunate, and you make more than a million dollars a year, you ought to pay more taxes.” The group even told anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist that he should take his extreme positions and “move to Somalia.”

Apropos of which, it won't come as a surprise to you that the real horror of "job-killing regulations," to industry, is that they create good-paying jobs.

Last, it continues to be just barely conceivable that there may not be some unitary "natural" sexual relationship we can use as a standard for human behavior:

With monogamy so uncommon in the animal world, the idea of lifetime fidelity can seem a little strange, at least to evolutionary biologists.

But in greylag geese, which can live for 20 years and share those years with just one mate, biologists have found a benefit: stress reduction. During fights, males with mates have lower heart rates than their single brethren. If their partners are nearby, they’re even more relaxed.

Friday, November 11, 2011

The fight to defeat Ohio's Issue 2 was one more look at what a determined mobilization of the 99 percent can look like. And holy crap, what a victory it led to: with 99 percent of votes reporting, the margin is 61-39.

"I will not back off until we solve the problem of this illegal invasion. Invaders, that's what they are. Invaders on the American sovereignty and it can't be tolerated." --Russell PearceSez you, tough guy:

In an apparent rebuke to his hard-line politics, Arizona state Senate President Russell Pearce was recalled by voters Tuesday. Senator Pearce was the author of the state's tough anti-illegal immigration law that has spawned copycat laws in several states from Utah to Alabama.

Openly gay and lesbian candidates endorsed by the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund won election to municipal, judicial and state legislative offices from coast to coast Tuesday night....

Candidates in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Charlotte, N.C., made history, becoming the first openly gay or lesbian candidates elected to those city councils. In Virginia, Adam Ebbin became the first openly gay person elected to the State Senate, and in New Jersey, Tim Eustace became the first non-incumbent openly gay candidate to win a seat in the State Assembly.

Top U.S. companies including Google, Microsoft, and Starbucks took the unusual step on Thursday of legally documenting their opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act.

A brief filed in court comes from 70 businesses and organizations that want their voice heard on the constitutionality of DOMA, which bans same-sex marriage from being recognized federally and stops couples married in states such as Massachusetts from having their weddings recognized in less accepting places such as Alabama.

The companies paint the law as an overburdening government regulation that should be repealed.

Sorry, Michele, but that's capitalism for ya. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned!

Of course, Big Homo's outest and proudest victory was in Maine, where a mincing coterie of queer-friendly voters flagrantly gay-married themselves to the fruitiest faggotry of all:

Despite a warning from Maine’s Republican party that a gay rights group supported same day registration, state voters restored the option by a three-to-two margin Tuesday night.

The Will of the People also thwarted the GOP's attempt to raise zygotes to the God-exalted status of corporations:

An extreme measure that would have given legal "personhood" status to undeveloped zygotes failed among ultra-conservative Mississippi voters Tuesday night, after a history of being rejected twice in Colorado and a struggle to even get on ballots in nine other states. But Personhood USA fully blames the Mississippi loss on Planned Parenthood.

"It's not because the people are not pro-life," Keith Mason, a co-founder of Personhood USA, said on Tuesday. "It's because Planned Parenthood put a lot of misconceptions and lies in front of folks and created a lot of confusion."

Fair enough. Teh People are staunchly pro-life; they just happened to find the satanic sophistries of the baby-killers momentarily plausible. This figurative shotgun marriage will never last, unlike the real kind.

A new front has opened in the War on Christmas: Coastal academic elites are using junk science -- possibly involving stem cells from pre-born children -- to keep those filthy OWS hippies from freezing to death over the winter.

Because of time and funding constraints—not to mention the ban on flammable materials—they are focused on low-tech solutions. Engineers are testing various materials to wrap heated bricks that would give off heat without burning skin. They are also exploring different methods of keeping water hot over long periods of time beyond a simple thermos, which maintains, but doesn’t radiate, heat. And they’re experimenting with different canopy materials to keep snow off of the roofs of tents and create dead air space, which boosts temperature.

Their ultimate aim, undoubtedly, is to create a human/hippie hybrid that will be able to masturbate publicly even at subzero temperatures.

Today in the Senate there was a major win for freedom of speech and the Internet. In a largely partisan vote Senate Democrats defeated a resolution introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) which would have overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) open Internet rules that are set to go into effect this month.

Australia will impose a carbon tax, which is being hailed as a death knell for civilization in the usual quarters. In a terrifying sign of things to come, scientists at MIT are working on some sort of parabolic trough for cooking fronds and bracken, which the pagan one-worlders will eventually force us to install in our gender-neutral caves:

MIT researchers say a hybrid solar-thermoelectric system they’re working on would provide a big advantage over conventional solar cells or solar thermal systems, particularly for household use: the ability to produce heat and electricity simultaneously. They propose accomplishing this mean feat through a clever reconfiguration of the standard parabolic trough.

"A done deal has come spectacularly undone. The American people spoke loudly and today the President responded, at least in part," said Bill McKibben, one of the major organizers of the fight against the pipeline. "Six months ago, almost no one outside the pipeline route even knew about Keystone XL. One month ago, a secret poll of 'energy insiders' by the National Journal found that 'virtually all' expected easy approval of the pipeline by year’s end. As late as last week the CBC reported that TransCanada was moving huge quantities of pipe across the border and seizing land by eminent domain, certain that its permit would be granted."

California has hit a major renewable energy milestone: 1 gigawatt — or 1,000 megawatts — of solar power has been installed on rooftops throughout the state, according to a report to be released Wednesday by Environment California, a statewide advocacy group.

One gigawatt is … enough energy to power 750,000 homes. Five countries have hit the 1 gigawatt installation mark to date: Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy and the Czech Republic. California has installed more solar power than France, China and Belgium.

Bank Transfer Day went well, especially for the banks. Thanks to this largely symbolic display of public outrage, they will no longer have to sully their coffers with some parking-lot attendant's heirloom jar of Indian head pennies:

[T]he banks are going to be better off because they are getting rid of their least-profitable or not profitable clients. It helps them stem this tsunami of cash that’s been flowing in that they don’t know what to do with.

As Thoreau said, "Simplify, simplify." What bank wouldn't be grateful to purge this parasite from its money-clogged bowels?

Mike Fox Sr., a beer magnate and well-known philanthropist, is set to announce Friday that he is divesting his long-held personal Bank of America account, which contains several hundred thousand dollars, in an effort to promote social and economic justice.

Fox said Thursday that he has also asked his executive team to move a $4 million-plus line of credit held by M.E. Fox & Co. from Bank of America to another institution.

As one might imagine, NASA employees utilize some serious high tech gadgetry. And as it stands right now, every time an engineer needs a microprocessor-controlled power tool or space-proof half-ratcheting torque wrenches for a specific project, they put in an order for a new one. That ends up creating a decent amount of redundancy, with different subagencies ordering the same high-tech parts, or failing to find suitable used ones.

So, one NASA employee has a bright idea -- start the most futuristic tool-lending library the world has ever seen. Matthew Ritsko, a NASA employee from Maryland has put the scheme forward as a cost-saving measure, as part of the Obama administration's SAVE initiative, which asks government employees to submit ideas for paring down federal expenditures.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Word on this street is, Eric Cantor is attempting to humanize himself. It's the usual patter for the usual rubes: he dotes on his children, is happiest among his flowers &c. For some reason, this reminds me of the memoir I once read by a German camp guard, in which he said something like "no prisoner can truly say he was ever ill-treated in my home." Surely, this good man's reward will be great in Heaven.

Paul Ryan is also a tragically misunderstood champion of the downtrodden. Here, he informs us that "the safety net for the poor is coming apart at the seams and no one in Washington seems to care." (See that guy over there? He wants to steal your money! I'll hold your wallet while you kick his ass.)

Not exactly a cheery opening, I know. But sometimes, it's good to remember that it's better to lose than to be like the "winners."

Thousands of women gathered in the capital, Sanaa, said witnesses. They carried banners that read: "Saleh the butcher is killing women and is proud of it" and "Women have no value in the eyes in Ali Saleh."

They collected their veils and scarves in a huge pile and set it ablaze -- an act that is highly symbolic in the conservative Islamic nation, where women use their veils to cover their faces and bodies. It's the first time in the nine months of Yemen's uprising that such an event has occurred.

The court reaffirmed that testing urine for drugs is a search, that application for a public benefit cannot depend on an unconstitutional condition, and that the state of Florida had fallen woefully short of establishing any need to conduct suspicionless testing.

The judge's order also chastised the Florida legislature for failing to heed lessons it should have learned in a state-commissioned pilot study of TANF recipients in Florida: they are no more likely to use illegal drugs than the population at large.

In related news, a Missouri judge has ruled that "Linn State Technical College’s mandatory drug-testing policy is patently unconstitutional":

[T]he school had implemented mandatory, suspicionless drug-testing of all incoming students, as well as students who were returning to school after an extended absence. The policy came with little warning and a $50 price tag per test – paid by the students. In implementing the policy, Linn State sought foolishly to go where no public college had gone before – and where we hope none will go in the future, thanks to the judge’s ruling.

A federal judge has dismissed Jan Brewer's frivolous lawsuit against the gummint:

The Republican governor was seeking a court order that would require the federal government to take extra steps, such as more border fencing, to protect Arizona until the border is controlled.

Bolton said Brewer’s claim that Washington has failed to protect Arizona from an “invasion” of illegal immigrants was a political question that isn’t appropriate for the court to decide.

A new treatment for the deadly Hendra virus has proven successful in primate tests — a major step forward in combating the virus, which kills about 60 percent of those it infects and has been implicated in sporadic outbreaks in Australia ever since it was first identified in 1994.

The BLE has blocked new uranium mining near the Grand Canyon for 20 years:

The announcement confirmed that the Obama administration was proceeding with a plan that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in July and is expected to make final in 30 days. The decision withdraws a right to Western public lands that mining companies otherwise would have under the 1872 Mining Law

A study in the Alaskan Arctic, employing camera traps, has shown that oil drilling impacts migrating birds in an unexpected way. The study found that populations of opportunistic predators, which prey on bird eggs or fledglings, may increase in oil drilling areas, putting extra pressure on nesting birds.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with NRDC in the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, today announced toxic lead has been removed from gasoline in more than 175 countries worldwide, representing near-global eradication. A new, independent scientific analysis shows the result of this achievement is a 90 percent drop in blood lead levels worldwide, as well as 1.2 million lives saved each year and $2.4 trillion generated in health, social and economic benefits annually.

A number of banks have decided not to impose monthly fees for debit card use. However, they would like it known that this decision comes from a purely inward communion with the Absolute, and should not be taken to imply that consumer pressure works:

J.P. Morgan joins U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup Inc., PNC Financial Services Group Inc., KeyCorp and other large banks that have said in recent days that they won't impose monthly fees on debit cards. None of those banks said they made their decisions because of the outcry over Bank of America's fees.

Imagine a one-celled organism the size of a mango. It's not science fiction, but fact: scientists have cataloged dozens of giant one-celled creatures, around 4 inches (10 centimeters), in the deep abysses of the world's oceans. But recent exploration of the Mariana Trench has uncovered the deepest record yet of the one-celled behemoths, known as xenophyophores.

Friday, October 21, 2011

The Uniform Crime Report Subcommittee voted unanimously to change the definition of rape, which had not been changed for 80 years (!) and rape will now be defined as, “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to approve a city ordinance that would prevent crisis pregnancy centers from spreading false or misleading advertisements about their facilities. The ordinance requires that crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) display signs indicating whether they offer comprehensive reproductive health services, including abortions and contraception, and whether a licensed medical professional is on staff.

Speaking of which, Rick Santorum has vowed to put an end to contraception if elected, on the grounds that "it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” There was a time when this might have been an attention-grabbing stance, but as the Right thrusts itself ever deeper into the nether regions of sexual delirium, Santorum's in danger of being Left Behind. Who needs him when we've got Mark Driscoll?

[M]asturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman.

It's clearly time to bring back Dr. Moodie's apparatus for boys! If leather-and-chrome genital bondage devices can't stop this nation's epidemic of perversion, what on earth can? It'll create jobs, too: We've got a country full of unemployed steampunk designers who've been dying for an opportunity like this.

Anyway. An Oklahoma judge has blocked a particularly stupid and brutal anti-abortion law:

The temporary injunction prevents the bill from going into effect on Nov. 1. Passed earlier this year by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Mary Fallin, the measure requires doctors to follow the strict guidelines and protocols authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and prohibits off-label uses of the drugs. It also requires doctors to examine the women, document certain medical conditions and schedule follow-up appointments.

Opponents of the measure say the off-label use of drugs — such as changing a recommended dosage or prescribing it for different symptoms than the drug was initially approved for — is common, and that the measure would prevent doctors from using their best medical judgment.

And a federal judge has blocked a DoE uranium-leasing plan on Colorado public lands:

In a major victory for clean air, clean water and endangered species on public lands, a federal judge on Tuesday halted the Department of Energy’s 42-square-mile uranium-leasing program that threatened the Dolores and San Miguel rivers in southwestern Colorado. Five conservation groups had sued to halt the leasing program, charging that the Department of Energy was failing to adequately protect the environment or analyze the full impacts of renewed uranium mining on public lands.

The US Patent and Trademark Office just revealed that Apple has been granted 20 new patents which focus on next generation solar technology. According to PatentlyApple, the patents not only cover solar technology being used to extend the battery lives of personal devices, but will also see the development of a cool new product – a specialized back panel reflector that uses sunlight to illuminate laptop screens.

The most populous U.S. state is moving ahead with the plan years after federal regulators rejected a similar idea for the nation, partly on concerns of the effect on businesses.

The California Air Resources Board voted 8-0 to adopt the market regulations, which officials said are critical to the state's goal of cutting carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- about a 22 percent reduction from forecasted business-as-usual output.

The group of 285 investors issued a joint statement emphasizing the urgent need for policy action which stimulates private sector investment in climate change solutions, creates jobs, and ensures the long-term sustainability and stability of the world economic system.

The statement represents the largest group, by both number of signatories and assets under management, ever to call for policy action on climate change. Signatories to the statement include financial institutions, state treasurers, controllers, pension fund leaders, asset managers, insurance groups, faith groups and foundations worldwide.

The environmental license for the controversial Belo Monte dam violates the constitutional rights of indigenous communities and is therefore illegal, ruled a federal judge in Brazil on Monday.

Judge Selene Maria de Almeida concluded that the 2005 decree that authorized the dam is illegal because Congress failed to carry out a consultation process with communities that will be affected by the dam. The consultation process is a right guaranteed to indigenous communities under Brazil's constitution.

Last, rumor has it that we may actually leave Iraq. I know intellectually that this is a good thing, but it doesn't make me feel much of anything beyond dull rage.

President Obama will address reports that all U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of year in a statement scheduled for 12:45PM ET. President Obama's statement comes following a discussion he had with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Last week, reports indicated that the U.S. had abandoned plans to keep forces in Iraq past the December 31 withdrawal deadline and various cable reports now are indicating the decision has been finalized. 40,000 troops are currently in Iraq.

Friday, October 14, 2011

This morning's planned eviction of Occupy Wall Street has been called off:

A confrontation between Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and New York City police was avoided after Brookfield Office Properties Inc. postponed cleaning its Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, where the protesters have been camping out for almost a month.

Remember back in August after the phoney "debt ceiling crisis" that the GOP ginned up? Standard and Poor's (S&P) downgraded the credit ranking of the United States. Two other rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch's, did NOT follow suit.

This morning comes news however that Fitch's has downgraded the Viability Rating to NEGATIVE of.....Bank of America!

November 5 is Bank Transfer Day. About time, too. Now, if we can just get people to cancel their cable service and send the monthly fees to Planned Parenthood....

A professional ethics panel recommended Thursday that former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline have his state law license suspended indefinitely over his conduct during criminal investigations of abortion providers, saying he was “motivated by dishonesty and selfishness.”

Politico’s Morning Tech reported that tech-giant Yahoo “has quietly left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” The company wouldn’t give a reason for its departure, but has been clashing with the Chamber over the PROTECT IP Act, a bill that would limit activities on websites accused of using copyrighted material. According to U.S. Chamber Watch, more than 50 local Chambers of Commerce and a dozen major corporations “have abandoned or disavowed the U.S. Chamber for their radical positions and pay-to-play model.”

A number of media outlets seem to have developed some form of rudimentary spine:

As of this morning, 30 Ohio television stations had pulled the deceptive ad supporting the state's Issue 2, which would limit collective bargaining for public workers. The ad takes footage from an ad opposing Issue 2 and makes it appear as if the woman in the original ad supports the measure. Building a Better Ohio, the Republican group that released the deceptive ad, has insisted that it was totally kosher to appropriate the woman's image and words and reverse their meaning.

In California, Jerry Brown has finally signed the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act:

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez praised the governor’s decision to sign the bill stating, “Today, Governor Brown helped farm workers take their biggest step forward yet in the cause of fair treatment for farm workers by approving his proposal put into legislation by Sen. Steinberg. Under SB 126, if growers cheat during an election campaign, break the law and deny farm workers their right to have a union, then the Agricultural Labor Relations Board can certify the union.”

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Friday, that bans any sale, trade and possession of shark fins. The bill, which will come into effect on Jan. 1, 2012, was promulgated to protect the dwindling shark population.

By a margin of just two votes (74-72), Australia's plan to put a price on carbon passed its toughest hurdle today. It is now expected that the Australian legislator will moved forward to put the carbon tax into law. The carbon tax, pushed aggressively by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, was just as ferociously opposed by business leaders and opposition party leader, Tony Abbott.

A Tennessee lawmaker who is a major proponent of legislation allowing gun owners to carry firearms in bars was arrested on Tuesday and charged with driving under the influence and possession of a handgun while under the influence, Davidson County Sheriff's Office confirmed to TPM.

One of the top executives at the European branch of the Wall Street Journal, the flagship newspaper at Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, has resigned amid a growing scandal that has called into question the paper’s journalistic ethics and jeopardized its reputation. Adding to the scandals News Corp. is already facing in Europe — alleged phone hacking, bribing of public officials — and a potential criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, the Guardian reported today that Andrew Langhoff, the European director of Dow Jones and Co. (the subsidiary of News Corp. that owns the Journal), oversaw a massive scam that artificially inflated the circulation numbers in Europe in order to avoid losing investors, readers, and advertisers.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Now homo’s can have homo parties in base. Men can wear dresses after work on base.

same sex can kiss and hold hands on base. Homo officers will give promotion to their homo.

women can buy strap on and both sexes can buy homo mags.

men forced to ahve showers with homos acting up.

The essential justice of these observations is borne out by Israel, where the incidence of homo's of both sexes using fag money to buy homo strap-on mags from gaylords in pervert stores has gone up 3 trillion percent since Homogeddon.

Let's just hope God doesn't stop smiling on our military ventures. Everything's been going so nicely up 'til now.

In other homo news, Alaska is forcing men to ahve showers with homos acting up:

Alaska’s same-sex couples are entitled to the same senior citizen and disabled veteran property tax exemptions as married couples, a state judge has ruled. Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner said in his decision that the state’s marital classification violates the Alaska Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Since 1979, Congress has prohibited the Peace Corps from providing coverage for abortion services with no exception. The allowances for abortion coverage in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment that are found in other federal health insurance plans are denied to women serving in the Peace Corps — despite the fact that these women often serve in countries where good and safe medical care is hard to come by, and the Peace Corps has acknowledged that it is in the midst of grappling with a serious sexual assault problem....

That's why today, for the first time in recent memory, the Senate bill that funds the Peace Corps program was voted out of committee with exceptions for life, rape, and incest in its abortion coverage ban. This is a first and crucial step toward ensuring that the health and well-being of Peace Corps volunteers is fully protected.

Nearly 1 million more young adults have obtained health insurance since the 2010 health-care law began requiring insurers to let adult children stay on their parents’ plans until age 26, according to government data released Wednesday.

The jump in enrollment caused the share of young adults who are uninsured to drop from 34 percent at the start of 2010 to 30 percent — or 9.1 million people — by March of this year, according to a national interview survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Obama administration designated the North Pacific loggerhead sea turtle as endangered under the Endangered Species Act today. Populations of this rare and ancient turtle, which spends much of its time off the coasts of Mexico and Southern California, have declined by at least 80 percent over the past decade. Although loggerhead sea turtles have been listed as threatened since 1978, today’s rule recognizes that some populations are nearing extinction from fisheries bycatch, climate change and marine pollution, including oil spills.

The tiny species of Millerbird, native to Hawaii's Nihoa island, has been teetering on the brink of extinction there for decades. But now, in an attempt to hedge the chances of the bird's survival, conservationists have gifted two dozen of them a new place to call their very own own -- a remote, 1,023 acres Hawaiian island that, naturalists hope, will become a Millerbird love nest.

[T]he first concrete was scooped away from the Elwha Dam over the weekend as part of the largest dam removal in U.S. history.

The dam removal includes the Elwha's two dams -- the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam. It will cost roughly $27 million and take three years, said Don Laford, the project's construction manager.

Blog of Rights reports that a federal judge has upheld Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, "which requires states with a history of voter suppression to seek approval before implementing changes to their voting laws."

The court rightfully noted that the past 25 years have provided ample evidence of discrimination against minority voters. The judge cited a 1991 incident in which Mississippi state legislators opposed a plan that would strengthen minority voting rights, referring to the plan as the “black plan” and privately as “the n-plan.” The court also cited an incident where the chairman of the Georgia House Reapportionment Committee told his colleagues, “The Justice Department is trying to make us draw nigger districts and I don't want to draw nigger districts.” The court ultimately concluded that the reauthorization of Section 5 was a “congruent and proportional remedy” to the discriminatory behavior that filled the more than 15,000 pages of legislative history.

Last week, activists working on the campaign to permanently clean up New Jersey's Ringwood State Park got major news. At a packed community hearing, state officials backed away from plans to transfer the ownership of contaminated areas of the park back to Ford Motor Company, responding to the campaign on Change.org to keep the park in public hands.

Farmers in one of Alabama's leading agricultural areas asked legislators Monday to make emergency changes to the state's tough new law against illegal immigration, saying millions of dollars of crops are at risk in coming weeks because of a sudden lack of hands for harvest....

About 50 growers packed a truck-stop dining room 45 miles north of Birmingham. They pleaded with three north Alabama lawmakers to amend the law and save what they called the lifeblood of the state's agriculture operations: The Hispanic workers who pick vegetables, gather chickens from poultry houses, pull sweet potatoes out of the ground and make the cardboard boxes that hold produce.

JSTOR has announced that it is going to make all of its journal content published prior to 1923 in the United States (the date before which all works published in the USA are held to be in the public domain) and prior to 1870 elsewhere in the world (a reasonable assumption based on the calculation of 70 years after the death of the author for a creative work in European law) freely available to anyone, anywhere. This represents 500,000 articles from 220 journals, or around 6% of the entire JSTOR collection.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have reconstructed the internal “movie” that plays in a person’s head. To re-create dynamic visual experiences, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of volunteers (the other members of the research team) as they watched short movie clips.

Click through to watch the clips, which look a bit like an animated collaboration between J.M.W. Turner and Francis Bacon.